your enthusiasm for Greece; it was with no other object than this that I
set out on my travels. The hardships I have endured in the countries
through which I passed on my way hither are infinite; and I had already
decided, when I met you, that before the sun set I would return to my
ship; so much was I disturbed at the strange and outlandish sights that I
have seen. And now, Toxaris, I adjure you by Scimetar and Zamolxis, our
country's Gods,--take me by the hand, be my guide, and make me acquainted
with all that is best in Athens and in the rest of Greece; their great
men, their wise laws, their customs, their assemblies, their
constitution, their everyday life. You and I have both travelled far to
see these things: you will not suffer me to depart without seeing them?'
'What! come to the very door, and then turn back? This is not the
language of enthusiasm. However, there is no fear of that--you will not
go back, Athens will not let you off so easily. She is not so much at a
loss for charms wherewith to detain the stranger: she will take such a
hold on you, that you will forget your own wife and children--if you have
any. Now I will put you into the readiest way of seeing Athens, ay, and
Greece, and the glories of Greece. There is a certain philosopher living
here; he is an Athenian, but has travelled a great deal in Asia and
Egypt, and held intercourse with the most eminent men. For the rest, he
is none of your moneyed men: indeed, he is quite poor; be prepared for an
old man, dressed as plainly as could be. Yet his virtue and wisdom are
held in such esteem, that he was employed by them to draw up a
constitution, and his ordinances form their rule of life. Make this man
your friend, study him, and rest assured that in knowing him you know
Greece; for he is an epitome of all that is excellent in the Greek
character. I can do you no greater service than to introduce you to him.'
'Let us lose no time, then, Toxaris. Take me to him. But perhaps that is
not so easily done? He may slight your intercessions on my behalf?'
'You know not what you say. Nothing gives him greater pleasure than to
have an opportunity of showing his hospitality to strangers. Only follow
me, and you shall see how courteous and benevolent he is, and how devout
a worshipper of the God of Hospitality. But stay: how fortunate! here he
comes towards us. See, he is wrapped in thought, and mutters to himself.
--Solon!' he cried; 'I bring you the best of gifts--a stranger who craves
your friendship. He is a Scythian of noble family; but has left all and
come here to enjoy the society of Greeks, and to view the wonders of
their country. I have hit upon a simple expedient which will enable him
to do both, to see all that is to be seen, and to form the most desirable
acquaintances: in other words, I have brought him to Solon, who, if I
know anything of his character, will not refuse to take him under his
protection, and to make him a Greek among Greeks.--It is as I told you,
Anacharsis: having seen Solon, you have seen all; behold Athens; behold
Greece. You are a stranger no longer: all men know you, all men are your
friends; this it is to possess the friendship of the venerable Solon.
Conversing with him, you will forget Scythia and all that is in it. Your
toils are rewarded, your desire is fulfilled. In him you have the
mainspring of Greek civilization, in him the ideals of Athenian
philosophers are realized. Happy man--if you know your happiness--to be
the friend and intimate of Solon!'
It would take too long to describe the pleasure of Solon at Toxaris's
'gift,' his words on the occasion, and his subsequent intercourse with
Anacharsis--how he gave him the most valuable instruction, procured him
the friendship of all Athens, showed him the sights of Greece, and took
every trouble to make his stay in the country a pleasant one; and how
Anacharsis for his part regarded the sage with such reverence, that he
was never willingly absent from his side. Suffice it to say, that the
promise of Toxaris was fulfilled: thanks to Solon's good offices,
Anacharsis speedily became familiar with Greece and with Greek society,
in which he was treated with the consideration due to one who came thus
strongly recommended; for here too Solon was a lawgiver: those whom he
esteemed were loved and admired by all. Finally, if we may believe the
statement of Theoxenus, Anacharsis was presented with the freedom of the
city, and initiated into the mysteries; nor does it seem likely that he
would ever have returned to Scythia, had not Solon died.
And now perhaps I had better put the moral to my tale, if it is not to
wander about in a headless condition. What are Anacharsis and Toxaris
doing here to-day in Macedonia, bringing Solon with them too, poor old
gentleman, all the way from Athens? It is time for me to explain. The
fact is, my situation is pretty much that of Anacharsis. I crave your
indulgence, in venturing to compare myself with royalty. Anacharsis,
after all, was a barbarian; and I should hope that we Syrians are as good
as Scythians. And I am not comparing myself with Anacharsis the king, but
Anacharsis the barbarian. When first I set foot in your city, I was
filled with amazement at its size, its beauty, its population, its
resources and splendour generally. For a time I was dumb with admiration;
the sight was too much for me. I felt like the island lad Telemachus, in
the palace of Menelaus; and well I might, as I viewed this city in all
her pride;
A garden she, whose flowers are ev'ry blessing.
Thus affected, I had to bethink me what course I should adopt. For as to
lecturing here, my mind had long been made up about _that_; what
other audience could I have in view, that I should pass by this great
city in silence? To make a clean breast of it, then, I set about
inquiring who were your great men; for it was my design to approach them,
and secure their patronage and support in facing the public. Unlike
Anacharsis, who had but one informant, and a barbarian at that, I had
many; and all told me the same tale, in almost the same words. 'Sir,'
they said, 'we have many excellent and able men in this city--nowhere
will you find more: but two there are who stand pre-eminent; who in birth
and in prestige are without a rival, and in learning and eloquence might
be matched with the Ten Orators of Athens. They are regarded by the
public with feelings of absolute devotion: their will is law; for they
will nothing but the highest interests of the city. Their courtesy, their
hospitality towards strangers, their unassuming benevolence, their
modesty in the midst of greatness, their gentleness, their affability,--
all these you will presently experience, and will have something to say
on the subject yourself. But--wonder of wonders!--these two are of one
house, father and son. For the father, conceive to yourself a Solon, a
Pericles, an Aristides: as to the son, his manly comeliness and noble
stature will attract you at the first glance; and if he do but say two
words, your ears will be taken captive by the charm that sits upon his
tongue. When he speaks in public, the city listens like one man, open-
mouthed; 'tis Athens listening to Alcibiades; yet the Athenians presently
repented of their infatuation for the son of Clinias, but here love grows
to reverence; the welfare of this city, the happiness of her citizens,
are all bound up in one man. Once let the father and son admit you to
their friendship, and the city is yours; they have but to raise a finger,
to put your success beyond a doubt.'--Such, by Heaven (if Heaven must be
invoked for the purpose), such was the unvarying report I heard; and I
now know from experience that it fell far short of the truth.
Then up, nor waste thy days In indolent delays,
as the Cean poet cries; I must strain every nerve, work body and soul, to
gain these friends. That once achieved, fair weather and calm seas are
before me, and my haven is near at hand.
THE WAY TO WRITE HISTORY
MY DEAR PHILO,
There is a story of a curious epidemic at Abdera, just after the
accession of King Lysimachus. It began with the whole population's
exhibiting feverish symptoms, strongly marked and unintermittent from the
very first attack. About the seventh day, the fever was relieved, in some
cases by a violent flow of blood from the nose, in others by perspiration
not less violent. The mental effects, however, were most ridiculous; they
were all stage-struck, mouthing blank verse and ranting at the top of
their voices. Their favourite recitation was the _Andromeda_ of
Euripides; one after another would go through the great speech of
Perseus; the whole place was full of pale ghosts, who were our seventh-
day tragedians vociferating,
O Love, who lord'st it over Gods and men,
and the rest of it. This continued for some time, till the coming of
winter put an end to their madness with a sharp frost. I find the
explanation of the form it took in this fact: Archelaus was then the
great tragic actor, and in the middle of the summer, during some very hot
weather, he had played the _Andromeda_ there; most of them took the
fever in the theatre, and convalescence was followed by a relapse--into
tragedy, the _Andromeda_ haunting their memories, and Perseus
hovering, Gorgon's head in hand, before the mind's eye.
Well, to compare like with like, the majority of our educated class is
now suffering from an Abderite epidemic. They are not stage-struck,
indeed; that would have been a minor infatuation--to be possessed with
other people's verses, not bad ones either; no; but from the beginning of
the present excitements--the barbarian war, the Armenian disaster, the
succession of victories--you cannot find a man but is writing history;
nay, every one you meet is a Thucydides, a Herodotus, a Xenophon. The old
saying must be true, and war be the father of all things [Footnote: See
note on _Icaromenippus_, 8.], seeing what a litter of historians it
has now teemed forth at a birth.
Such sights and sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote
about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had
thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another
wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a
battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes
having nothing to do--of course no one thought of giving _him_ a
job--was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin
rolling his tub-dwelling energetically up and down the Craneum; an
acquaintance asked, and got, the explanation: 'I do not want to be
thought the only idler in such a busy multitude; I am rolling my tub to
be like the rest.'
I too am reluctant to be the only dumb man at so vociferous a season; I
do not like walking across the stage, like a 'super', in gaping silence;
so I decided to roll _my_ cask as best I could. I do not intend to
write a history, or attempt actual narrative; I am not courageous enough
for that; have no apprehensions on my account; I realize the danger of
rolling the thing over the rocks, especially if it is only a poor little
jar of brittle earthenware like mine; I should very soon knock against
some pebble and find myself picking up the pieces. Come, I will tell you
my idea for campaigning in safety, and keeping well out of range.
Give a wide berth to all that foam and spray, and to the anxieties which
vex the historian--that I shall be wise enough to do; but I propose to
give a little advice, and lay down a few principles for the benefit of
those who do venture. I shall have a share in their building, if not in
the dedicatory inscription; my finger-tips will at least have touched
their wet mortar.
However, most of them see no need for advice here: _there might as well
be an art of talking, seeing, or eating; history-writing is perfectly
easy, comes natural, is a universal gift; all that is necessary is the
faculty of translating your thoughts into words_. But the truth is--you
know it without my telling, old friend--, it is _not_ a task to be lightly
undertaken, or carried through without effort; no, it needs as much care
as any sort of composition whatever, if one means to create 'a possession
for ever,' as Thucydides calls it. Well, I know I shall not get a hearing
from many of them, and some will be seriously offended--especially any who
have finished and produced their work; in cases where its first reception
was favourable, it would be folly to expect the authors to recast or
correct; has it not the stamp of finality? is it not almost a State
document? Yet even they may profit by my words; _we_ are not likely to be
attacked again; we have disposed of all our enemies; but there might be a
Celto-Gothic or an Indo-Bactrian war; then our friends' composition might
be improved by the application of my measuring-rod--always supposing that
they recognize its correctness; failing that, let them do their own
mensuration with the old foot-rule; the doctor will not particularly mind,
though all Abdera insists on spouting the _Andromeda_.
Advice has two provinces--one of choice, the other of avoidance; let us
first decide what the historian is to avoid--of what faults he must purge
himself--, and then proceed to the measures he must take for putting
himself on the straight high road. This will include the manner of his
beginning, the order in which he should marshal his facts, the questions
of proportion, of discreet silence, of full or cursory narration, of
comment and connexion. Of all that, however, later on; for the present we
deal with the vices to which bad writers are liable. As to those faults
of diction, construction, meaning, and general amateurishness, which are
common to every kind of composition, to discuss them is neither
compatible with my space nor relevant to my purpose.
But there are mistakes peculiar to history; your own observation will
show you just those which a constant attendance at authors'
readings [Footnote: These were very common in Roman Imperial times, for
purposes of advertisement, of eliciting criticism, &c. 'The audience at
recitations may be compared with the modern literary reviews, discharging
the functions of a preventive and emendatory, not merely of a
correctional tribunal. Before publication a work might thus be known to
more hearers than it would now find readers' Mayor, _Juvenal_, iii.
9.] has impressed on me; you have only to keep your ears open at every
opportunity. It will be convenient, however, to refer by the way to a few
illustrations in recent histories. Here is a serious fault to begin with.
It is the fashion to neglect the examination of facts, and give the space
gained to eulogies of generals and commanders; those of their own side
they exalt to the skies, the other side they disparage intemperately.
They forget that between history and panegyric there is a great gulf
fixed, barring communication; in musical phrase, the two things are a
couple of octaves apart. The panegyrist has only one concern--to commend
and gratify his living theme some way or other; if misrepresentation will
serve his purpose, he has no objection to that. History, on the other
hand, abhors the intrusion of any least scruple of falsehood; it is like
the windpipe, which the doctors tell us will not tolerate a morsel of
stray food.
Another thing these gentlemen seem not to know is that poetry and history
offer different wares, and have their separate rules. Poetry enjoys
unrestricted freedom; it has but one law--the poet's fancy. He is
inspired and possessed by the Muses; if he chooses to horse his car with
winged steeds, or set others a-galloping over the sea, or standing corn,
none challenges his right; his Zeus, with a single cord, may haul up
earth and sea, and hold them dangling together--there is no fear the cord
may break, the load come tumbling down and be smashed to atoms. In a
complimentary picture of Agamemnon, there is nothing against his having
Zeus's head and eyes, his brother Posidon's chest, Ares's belt--in fact,
the son of Atreus and Aerope will naturally be an epitome of all
Divinity; Zeus or Posidon or Ares could not singly or severally provide
the requisite perfections. But, if history adopts such servile arts, it
is nothing but poetry without the wings; the exalted tones are missing;
and imposition of other kinds without the assistance of metre is only the
more easily detected. It is surely a great, a superlative weakness, this
inability to distinguish history from poetry; what, bedizen history, like
her sister, with tale and eulogy and their attendant exaggerations? as
well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up with
purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his cheeks;
faugh, what an object would one make of him with such defilements!
I would not be understood to exclude eulogy from history altogether; it
is to be kept to its place and used with moderation, is not to tax the
reader's patience; I shall presently show, indeed, that in all such
matters an eye is to be had to posterity. It is true, there is a school
which makes a pretty division of history into the agreeable and the
useful, and defends the introduction of panegyric on the ground that it
is agreeable, and pleases the general reader. But nothing could be
further from the truth. In the first place the division is quite a false
one; history has only one concern and aim, and that is the useful; which
again has one single source, and that is truth. The agreeable is no doubt
an addition, if it is present; so is beauty to an athlete; but a
Nicostratus, who is a fine fellow and proves himself a better man than
either of his opponents, gets his recognition as a Heracles, however ugly
his face may be; and if one opponent is the handsome Alcaeus himself--
handsome enough to make Nicostratus in love with him, says the story--,
that does not affect the issue. History too, if it can deal incidentally
in the agreeable, will attract a multitude of lovers; but so long as it
does its proper business efficiently--and that is the establishment of
truth--, it may be indifferent to beauty.
It is further to be remarked, that in history sheer extravagance has not
even the merit of being agreeable; and the extravagance of eulogy is
doubly repulsive, as extravagance, and as eulogy; at least it is only
welcome to the vulgar majority, not to that critical, that perhaps
hypercritical audience, whom no slip can escape, who are all eyes like
Argus, but keener than he, who test every word as a moneychanger might
his coins, rejecting the false on the spot, but accepting the good and
heavy and true; it is they that we should have in mind as we write
history, and never heed the others, though they applaud till they crack
their voices. If you neglect the critics, and indulge in the cloying
sweetness of tales and eulogies and such baits, you will soon find your
history a 'Heracles in Lydia.' No doubt you have seen some picture of
him: he is Omphale's slave, dressed up in an absurd costume, his lion-
skin and club transferred to her, as though she were the true Heracles,
while he, in saffron robe and purple jacket, is combing wool and wincing
under Omphale's slipper. A degrading spectacle it is--the dress loose and
flapping open, and all that was man in him turned to woman.
The vulgar may very likely extend their favour to this; but the select
(whose judgement you disregard) will get a good deal of entertainment out
of your heterogeneous, disjointed, fragmentary stuff. There is nothing
which has not a beauty of its own; but take it out of its proper sphere,
and the misuse turns its beauty to ugliness. Eulogy, I need hardly say,
may possibly please one person, the eulogized, but will disgust every one
else; this is particularly so with the monstrous exaggerations which are
in fashion; the authors are so intent on the patron-hunt that they cannot
relinquish it without a full exhibition of servility; they have no idea
of finesse, never mask their flattery, but blurt out their unconvincing
bald tale anyhow.
The consequence is, they miss even their immediate end; the objects of
their praise are more inclined (and quite right too) to dislike and
discard them for toadies--if they are men of spirit, at any rate.
Aristobulus inserted in his history an account of a single combat between
Alexander and Porus, and selected this passage to read aloud to the
former; he reckoned that his best chance of pleasing was to invent heroic
deeds for the king, and heighten his achievements. Well, they were on
board ship in the Hydaspes; Alexander took hold of the book, and tossed
it overboard; 'the author should have been treated the same way, by
rights,' he added, 'for presuming to fight duels for me like that, and
shoot down elephants single-handed.' A very natural indignation in
Alexander, of a piece with his treatment of the intrusive architect; this
person offered to convert the whole of Mount Athos into a colossal statue
of the king--who however decided that he was a toady, and actually gave
him less employment in ordinary than before.
The fact is, there is nothing agreeable in these things, except to any
one who is fool enough to enjoy commendations which the slightest inquiry
will prove to be unfounded; of course there _are_ ugly persons--women more
especially--who ask artists to paint them as beautiful as they can; they
think they will be really better-looking if the painter heightens the rose
a little and distributes a good deal of the lily. There you have the
origin of the present crowd of historians, intent only upon the passing
day, the selfish interest, the profit which they reckon to make out of
their work; execration is their desert--in the present for their
undisguised clumsy flattery, in the future for the stigma which their
exaggerations bring upon history in general. If any one takes some
admixture of the agreeable to be an absolute necessity, let him be
content with the independent beauties of style; these are agreeable
without being false; but they are usually neglected now, for the better
foisting upon us of irrelevant substitutes.
Passing from that point, I wish to put on record some fresh recollections
of Ionian histories--supported, now I think of it, by Greek analogies
also of recent date--both concerned with the war already alluded to. You
may trust my report, the Graces be my witness; I would take oath to its
truth, if it were polite to swear on paper. One writer started with
invoking the Muses to lend a hand. What a tasteful exordium! How suited
to the historic spirit! How appropriate to the style! When he had got a
little way on, he compared our ruler to Achilles, and the Parthian king
to Thersites; he forgot that Achilles would have done better if he had
had Hector instead of Thersites to beat, if there had been a man of might
fleeing in front,
But at his heels a mightier far than he.
He next proceeded to say something handsome about himself, as a fit
chronicler of such brilliant deeds. As he got near his point of
departure, he threw in a word for his native town of Miletus, adding that
he was thus improving on Homer, who never so much as mentioned his
birthplace. And he concluded his preface with a plain express promise to
advance our cause and personally wage war against the barbarians, to the
best of his ability. The actual history, and recital of the causes of
hostilities, began with these words:--'The detestable Vologesus (whom
Heaven confound!) commenced war on the following pretext.'